Assurance & Hearing the Word

Why is it that people may come to have a false assurance of salvation for a time, and be deceived as to their true state before God? This false assurance can come about by their thinking that their hearing the word of God preached, by itself, is enough to save them. They hear the word of God preached and some may even believe for a time, and yet their heart is not the good soil that it must be to have a certain assurance of their salvation.